One day ago

Rin walked along the street, Kuro curled up inside Kurikara's bag so as not to seem too conspicuous, and carefully mulled over the details of his assigned mission. Exorcise a second-level subordinate of Astaroth from the body of Tatsuki Inoue. Age of vessel – 48. Appearance of vessel – brunette, brown-eyed, around 5'6, moderately plump. Address of vessel – 409 Sakura Lane, Minami Ward, Yokohama.

"Hey, Kuro," he muttered to his familiar, "When do you think we'll be done with this?"

Two hours, I think? With your strength, Rin, easily one. But then again, we do tend to be a bit... destructive.

"That's… I can't even argue with that," Rin said with a snort. As he continued walking, he came to an intersection; noticing that the sign for the rightmost street read 'Sakura Lane', he took the turn and increased his pace, eager to finish and get back home to his brother.

Yukio's gone and made a bunch of friends all on his own – way to leave me out! I still think he misses me a little, though. Last night, he said cram school hadn't started yet because they were waiting for me…

His brows dipped into a dark frown as he recalled Yukio's biting admonishments over the phone for his lateness. Like it was his fault that the Order had screwed up his flight and sent him off to Wales instead! Rin scowled briefly, then shook his head: he was on a mission. He could think about this later.

He started to look carefully at each door, searching for the house number he needed. 407, 408, 409, he counted to himself. 410 – wait! Freezing on the spot, he shut his eyes and remembered the address: 409 Sakura Lane, Minami Ward, Yokohama.

Backing up one house, he squinted at the number of the door he was standing in front of. 409… Sakura Lane, Minami Ward, Yokohama.

"This is it, Kuro," he breathed. "The highest-level demon I've ever gotten to fight. Astaroth's direct subordinate… damn, Yukio should have been here too. It would've been awesome."

Let's do this, Rin! the demon chirped in his mind. Rin smiled, a little nervous despite his confident words, and walked the few steps to the door. Raising his hand, he took a deep breath – then rang the bell twice.

A tall brunette woman, skin pinched and flies buzzing around her, answered the door. Two large horns curved upwards out of her hair. Her once-plump cheeks were sunken, and she exuded a strong smell of rot. Coal tars flittered all over the apartment.

Rin's breath caught in his throat as her peeling lips pulled apart into a gap-toothed smile, one that he recognised. He'd only seen it once before, but the memory had terrified him enough to stay permanently in his head.

That isn't just any subordinate of Astaroth. It's the damn bastard himself.

"How have you been, Little Prince?" hissed the demon through the woman's mouth, an eerie look entering his eyes. "Let's play."

Rin's only thought before he turned around and started running like mad was, Yukio is going to be so angry that he missed out on this.

That was how he'd ended up coming to True Cross half-dead. Weakened by the long-term stay in the woman's body, Astaroth hadn't been as powerful as he should be, and Rin had been able to take him down using just the sheathed Kurikara. It'd still taken a great toll on him, though; fighting a Prince of Hell was no joke.

The woman had died as soon as Astaroth had been exorcised, her body too frail to handle life after the possession – Rin had buried her as best he could with his own fatigue. Then he'd had to flee. Astaroth's kin didn't take kindly to their master being exorcised, and by Satan's disobedient brat too: Rin had been chased by so many demons all the way back to Tokyo that it was a wonder he was still alive.

Now Rin cracked one eye open to find himself in a sterile white room – the True Cross hospital wing, by the looks of it. Yukio was leaning over him, hands blazing with Satan's flame as he passed them over Rin's wounded torso. The blue fire, for some strange reason, always healed any wounds either twin might have; Yukio put it down to the fact that they were Satan's children, saying that the flame recognised them as its master and accordingly healed them. Rin agreed: Yukio was usually right about these things.

"Hey," he croaked, immediately regretting it as a dry cough wracked his weak body. Yukio's eyes immediately snapped up to meet Rin's, concern bright in teal irises.

"How are you feeling?"

"I've been better," Rin said, trying for a smile. "But I'm good. I can go teach tomorrow."

It was the truth. The fire would heal him fast enough that he might even be able to go another few rounds with Astaroth tomorrow.

Yukio merely frowned, taking out a bandage and wrapping it around the gaping laceration on Rin's abdomen; Rin let out a soft hiss of pain as the material pressed into his tender body. The flames only healed and sterilised the worst part of the brothers' wounds – to patch up cuts and scars, they had to resort to traditional medicine.

"I see your – look of disapproval," Rin panted as Yukio shifted the fire to his shoulder. It helped, sure, but it also hurt like a bitch in the process. "Come on… I'll be okay, and you know it."

"You should rest," was all that Yukio said, mechanically continuing to patch up Rin's wounds. Rin barked a laugh and raised an eyebrow at him.

"And since when have I ever done what I was supposed to be doing?" he said sarcastically. Yukio snorted.

"Can't disagree with you there." he said almost fondly, a trace of laughter in his voice. Rin grinned up at his twin.

"You can't stop me, you know." he said impishly, wiggling his eyebrows.

"That's also true," said Yukio, sighing softly and finishing off the last wound with a flourish of his flaming hands. "This should heal you mostly anyway. The demon healing will take care of the rest throughout the night… but just to be safe, I want you to take the day off tomorrow. I'll take on your class; I'm qualified enough to teach an introduction to Self-Defence." Rin opened his mouth to complain, but Yukio fixed him with a stern glare. "Are we clear?"

"Yes! Yeah. We're clear," Rin said quickly, doing his best not to flinch away from Yukio's gimlet gaze. His little brother was scary when he wanted to be.

"I've got to get back to class, big brother. Please stay in bed. I'll know if you don't," Yukio said with a saccharine smile that was so chilling, Rin almost shivered. Almost, because no big brother worth his salt would be scared of his younger brother, even if Yukio wasa holy terror. (Ha! Holy!)

A few hours after Yukio had gone back to his classes, Rin was sitting up in his hospital bed, flipping through some papers. An open binder lay on his lap, full of pages that bore detailed lesson plans and annotations he'd made over the past few months for his class – Defence Against Demons. Yukio had been surprised that Rin had started preparing around the same time that he himself had, but Rin was dedicated to doing this job as well as possible. Though he was a slacker by nature, teaching Exwires how to survive was an important task and not one he was willing to fail at.

And he wasn't about to start by missing his very first class. Whatever Yukio said, he was going to attend regular classes and teach tomorrow, and that was that.

The papers he held now contained notes for the next day's class. He'd be teaching the students how to make the most basic and quickest of traps for a demon – magic circles. Rin went over his plan carefully, adding a note here and there: he already knew what he was going to present and how he would go about it.

"Rin!" called a loud female voice from the door of the hospital wing. Rin looked up from his papers, a little startled, to see Shura grinning brightly at him.

"Shura, hey!" he said cheerfully, returning her smile and setting his papers aside. Shura entered the wing, coming over to Rin's bed and grasping him in a loose hug. He held it for a second, then patted her back gently and released himself from the embrace. Shura seated herself on the side of the bed, her pale green eyes glittering as she looked him up and down. Knowing her, she probably had a million questions as to why he'd returned so banged up.

"So… I'm guessing it wasn't just any higher-level Astaroth-kin," she said dryly. "Was it one of his generals? Galister, Anyla?"

Rin shook his head, laughing softly.

"One more step up," he said, mirth twinkling in his eyes. Shura raised her eyebrows, her mouth parting in surprise.

"The only one directly above the Generals of Putrefaction is…" she said quietly, trailing off as she pieced it together.

"That's right!" Rin crowed. "The son of a bitch himself – Astaroth."

Shura's eyes widened at the confirmation and she leaned in close, her eyes sparkling with interest as she asked, "How'd it go? How'd ya even survive? No wonder you're so injured!"

"It was… tough," Rin admitted with a soft sigh, slumping back against his pillows. "He was pretty weak from his long stay in the human vessel, but even then it was difficult to beat him back without… you know."

Shura nodded in understanding, gesturing for him to continue. Rin closed his eyes, recalling the memories in vivid detail.

"He was so powerful, Shura. So damn powerful." he said with a quiet sigh. "Yukio and I would need to combine our… special strengths… to even get a chance at beating him when he was at full strength. He was weaker than normal, though, so I managed to complete the exorcism. But the vessel died on the spot."

Shura patted his arm sympathetically. Rin swallowed and continued, "I… buried her in some nearby woods, marked her a little gravestone. I would've passed out right there if it hadn't been for Astaroth's kin."

"They probably weren't very happy that ya exorcised their King," Shura said with a snort.

"Yeah," Rin laughed. "They chased me all the way back to Tokyo; I would've healed by now if they hadn't kept attacking. You know how Mephisto loves to torture me – I had to hitchhike all the way back to Tokyo because 'Kanagawa is way too close to send a cab'! The damn demons nearly killed me."

"I can't decide whether he hates ya or loves ya. But to be safe, I'll go wi' the latter." Shura said, grinning. Her eyes fell on the pile of papers next to Rin, and she quirked an eyebrow in a silent question.

"Lesson plans," Rin explained. "For tomorrow."

"Yer going to go to class? I heard Yukio telling ya that ya'd be resting tomorrow." Shura said sceptically. She'd been on the receiving end of Yukio's legendary temper more than once; though it never seemed to faze her much, she always joked that she had nearly pissed her pants when she'd faced it for the first time.

(To be honest, Rin wasn't sure that it was entirely a joke. He had been there that time, and had seen the look of abject terror that Shura had hidden by turning away from them.)

"Yeah, well, he isn't the boss of me. And I refuse to miss my first class," Rin said flatly, picking up his lesson plans once more. "I want to prepare a little more, so if you don't mind? Unless you have something to tell me?"

Shura's face became serious in an instant as he said the last words, and the atmosphere in the wing changed from light-hearted to heavy within a second.

"I do, actually. We both know I wouldn't have come unless I did." she said curtly.

"Get on with it," Rin snapped, trying to hide his nervousness. If even Shura was worried… well, whatever she was about to tell him wasn't something that should be taken lightly.

"Be careful of mirrors," Shura said quietly. "There are things that even your own reflection can hide from you."

Rin's brows furrowed in confusion, and he was just about to start asking questions when she got up and left the room as suddenly as she had come. The cry of, "Shura!" died down on his lips, and he stared at the door as it swung closed, frowning darkly.

What the hell does she mean?

The lesson plans lay forgotten as he wracked his brain, trying to come up with a proper solution to the problem he'd been presented.


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